Alberta family building 'earthship' to get off the grid without sacrificing luxury

‘These buildings are a machine that takes care of humans’

The Kinney family is building what is believed to be Alberta’s first earthship on rural land near Lethbridge. More than 800 tires and 12,000 cans are being used to construct the 1,800 square foot three-bedroom off-the-grid home. Once complete, the Kinney earthship will treat and recycle its greywater, generate its own electricity, produce a portion of its own food and regulate its own temperature. Michael Reynolds, an American architect and the “father” of earthships, is helping build the Alberta project.

Photograph by: Duncan Kinney
, Calgary Herald

Hundreds of tires, thousands of beer cans, and a range of natural and recycled materials are being used to construct an 1,800 square-foot, three-bedroom, off-the-grid, house on rural land in southern Alberta.

But “house” isn’t exactly the most accurate word for the radically sustainable structure.

The abode is officially known as an “earthship” and this one is believed to be Alberta’s first.

Calgarians Dawn and Glen Kinney are spending five weeks this summer building their dream home on land north of Lethbridge. More than 30 volunteers from around the world and a paid crew of 13 people from New Mexico, including the man who invented earthships, are helping the Kinneys construct the home.

Earthships offer all the comforts of a modern home with minimal to no utility bills, said Michael Reynolds, the American architect who coined the word earthship more than two decades ago and founded Earthship Biotecture, a company that designs and builds the structures.

“What these buildings exemplify is that it’s entirely possible to have everything you need in luxury — flat screen TV, high speed Internet, everything — without spending a dime and certainly without hurting the planet,” said the 68-year-old eco architect who has spent much of his life teaching and preaching the benefits of earthships.

Once complete, the Kinney earthship in southern Alberta will treat and recycle its greywater, generate its own electricity, produce a portion of its own food in a greenhouse, and regulate its own temperature.

After reading about earthships, then volunteering at an earthship build, Glen Kinney and his adult son Duncan were captivated by the concept and eager to one day build a sustainable structure of their own.

Glen and his wife Dawn bought 75 hectares of land 45 minutes from Lethbridge five years ago, knowing that the sloped grassland, near a river, would one day be the ideal site home for an earthship.

The couple, who are in their 50s and have six adult children, have both worked in oil and gas for years. Dawn recently retired and the pair felt it was time to downsize, so they began constructing their off-grid home.

The volunteers and New Mexico crew arrived at the end of June and the Kinney earthship is scheduled to be complete later this summer.

“Being in one of these houses is just a different experience,” said Duncan Kinney, who is taking the summer off work to help his parents build the earthship.

“It’s a house that takes care of you and takes care of itself and it takes care of the environment...They’re just really neat pieces of housing.”

After years of experimenting and prototypes, Reynolds constructed the first official earthship in New Mexico 25 years ago. He has spent the years since then refining the concept while travelling the world with Earthship Biotecture to design, build and speak about the structures.

“I have to be involved in the building because then I see how to evolve it, to make it more user-friendly, to make it easier to build. Plus, I eat, sleep and dream these things,” Reynolds said.

Hundreds of earthships have been built across the United States and a handful exist in Canada, including several in British Columbia.

The alternative form of housing became better known following a 2007 documentary about Reynolds and his “green disciples” called Garbage Warrior.

Over the years, the structures have grown in popularity and evolved.

“These buildings, they just get better every year,” Reynolds said.

“We build the same design over and over and so every little aspect of how they go together, how they preform, aerodynamics and thermal dynamics and everything just gets a little better each year. These things are now a BMW. They perform.”

Reynolds and his crew have been hard at work at the southern Alberta site for nearly three weeks and on Saturday, Reynolds took a break from building to host an eight hour $100 per ticket earthship seminar in Calgary — the first time he’s lectured in Alberta.

“A day is not long enough to tell you how to build the whole building,” he said. “But after a day it leaves you understanding that these buildings are a machine that takes care of humans.”

Earthship Biotecture sells books, videos and other resources and while some people use forms of the earthship concept in their buildings, Reynolds said the home under construction near Lethbridge marks the first time his crew has built in Alberta.

“Canada is tremendously interested in this kind of a building,” he said.

“A building that does everything for itself, totally off of every grid and they’re warm. It gets very cold (in Alberta) and the building has no backup heating whatsoever, it doesn’t need it.”

Walls built from recycled tires and cans encased in mortar allow the structures to maintain comfortable temperatures in any climate.

The front of an earthship, which faces south for maximum sunlight, is made of large glass windows and the buildings typically include indoor gardens that produce crops year-round.

Earthships use indoor and outdoor treatment cells to save, treat and reuse household sewage, while electricity from the sun and wind is stored in batteries and supplied to electrical outlets through a prepackaged power system.

Earthships address six issues that “all of humanity has to deal with,” said Reynolds, listing the issues as: shelter that is comfortable using minimal or no fuel, electricity for all devices, water, sewage, food and garbage.

“Those six issues every city, every municipality, every country has major programs to deal with these things. These buildings address all of these issues themselves so that a family doesn’t need to pay for any of these services and certainly doesn’t need to shatter the planet getting these services.”

The Kinney earthship, which consists of more than 800 tires and 12,000 cans, is being built in near-record time and the structure is scheduled to be complete later this summer.

While the Kinney family doesn’t yet know exactly how much the finished structure will cost, or how much money the sustainable structure will ultimately save them in utility bills, they do know their earthship is going to be a really neat, one-of-a-kind, home.

“It’s repositioning and rethinking a house and what it is and what it can do and how it interacts with the environment around it,” said Duncan Kinney.

The Kinney family is building what is believed to be Alberta’s first earthship on rural land near Lethbridge. More than 800 tires and 12,000 cans are being used to construct the 1,800 square foot three-bedroom off-the-grid home. Once complete, the Kinney earthship will treat and recycle its greywater, generate its own electricity, produce a portion of its own food and regulate its own temperature. Michael Reynolds, an American architect and the “father” of earthships, is helping build the Alberta project.

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